Things We Found on the Internet, Vol. 2

It’s been a while since we did the last one Hope’s every­one’s had a good month since the last time this was post­ed, ide­al­ly this becomes more a reg­u­lar fea­ture on Ex-Plain, because there’s no short­age of inter­est­ing things to find on the inter­net, and the prover­bial file cab­i­net we’re putting those things in is get­ting a bit full. With­out fur­ther expla­na­tion, let’s get right into it.

1. Miles Davis in Malibu

Miles Davis in Mal­ibu, 1985. Pho­to by Antho­ny Bar­boza.

Bar­boza, one of the pri­ma­ry pho­tog­ra­phers of the late jazz leg­end, remem­bers his encoun­ters with Davis as fol­lows: “I nev­er became close to any­one I pho­tographed because I didn’t want to. I was just there to do a job. But Miles Davis picked me out. I was told to pho­to­graph him in 1971. I’d nev­er met him before. I asked peo­ple what he was like because I heard a lot of sto­ries about how he could be real­ly rough. I heard he let some pho­tog­ra­phers stand out­side his brown­stone for I don’t know how many hours. But it just so hap­pened that his hair­dress­er was his friend and knew me. So I got in right away and spent the whole day in his house doing what­ev­er I want­ed, pho­tograph­ing him every­where.

After that, he called me every day. “Bar­boza, what you doing?” After that I met his ex-wife, Bet­ty Davis, and pho­tographed her a lot. Lat­er I was sent to his place in Mal­ibu by the New York Times because they fig­ured Bar­boza is the only one who can get along with Miles. I was doing the shoot­ing, but he want­ed to go swim­ming, and his hair got tan­gled because he had rub­ber bands in it. He’d asked me to take out the rub­ber bands, but I couldn’t — they got stuck in there! Oh gee. So I did that pho­to­graph in Mal­ibu. When he passed away, I cried because I was real­ly close to him. I cre­at­ed that back­ground from yarn or string. There’s a gold plate with his birth and death. They put it on the cov­er of their mag­a­zine.”

2. Thoughts on Nu Metal from 2001

Styles and thoughts from rock music fans in and around Lon­don, from Ker­rang mag­a­zine’s 2001 year­book sec­tion. Very strong opin­ions about Mar­i­lyn Man­son and Fred Durst in par­tic­u­lar.

3. Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt of Everything But The Girl

Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt of Every­thing But The Girl pho­tographed by Marce­lo Krasil­cic for the cov­er of the album Walk­ing Wound­ed, 1996. It’s just a great album from a very spe­cial era of elec­tron­ic music, every­one should give it a lis­ten.

4. The Art of Tishan Hsu

Above is a paint­ing from 1997 titled “Lip Ser­vice” by Amer­i­can artist Tis­han Hsu.

Tis­han Hsu’s art was (and maybe still is) way ahead of its time, he explores the merg­ing of the human body with tech­no­log­i­cal sys­tems, antic­i­pat­ing themes that would lat­er become cen­tral to dig­i­tal cul­ture. Emerg­ing in the ear­ly 1980s, his paint­ings depict bio­mor­phic forms that resem­ble organs, cir­cuit­ry, skin, and mechan­i­cal com­po­nents fused into ambigu­ous hybrid struc­tures.

Hsu’s work reflects anx­i­eties and trans­for­ma­tions asso­ci­at­ed with ear­ly com­put­ing, biotech­nol­o­gy, and cyber­net­ic the­o­ry, pre­sent­ing the body not as a fixed bio­log­i­cal enti­ty but as some­thing porous, mod­i­fi­able, and net­worked. Long before body hor­ror became a big trend in film and art, Hsu’s paint­ings visu­al­ized a world in which flesh, machines, and infor­ma­tion sys­tems col­lapsed into one anoth­er. I think one day we’ll write an entire piece on his work, there’s def­i­nite­ly a lot to say.

5. Damo Suzuki’s Style

Damo Suzu­ki of the Ger­man exper­i­men­tal rock band Can. The exact date and pho­tog­ra­ph­er unknown. What is known, how­ev­er, is that that fit is incred­i­ble, quin­tes­sen­tial­ly 70s.

6. This Power Line Clothing Rack

Jay­walk­ing, a streetwear fash­ion house in Mum­bai found­ed by Jay Jajal, installed a cloth­ing rack at its store designed to resem­ble an elec­tri­cal pow­er line. This inno­v­a­tive instal­la­tion trans­forms the basic retail gar­ment rail into a strik­ing cen­ter­piece, in line with Jaywalking’s exper­i­men­tal approach to fash­ion and visu­al sto­ry­telling.

Rather than dis­play­ing clothes with con­ven­tion­al racks and shelv­ing, the pow­er line rack ele­vates gar­ments by sus­pend­ing them in a bold, indus­tri­al-inspired struc­ture that visu­al­ly echoes the local urban land­scape, where peo­ple will some­times (unad­vis­ed­ly) hang their laun­dry out to dry on real pow­er lines. The choice to meet the lux­u­ry with the ordi­nary and high­light a pecu­liar, if risky, local prac­tice is an inter­est­ing exam­ple of how a brand can sub­vert aes­thet­ic expec­ta­tions through some­thing as sim­ple as a rack, in addi­tion to giv­ing a sense of place.

7. A Morbid 80’s Anti-Drug Ad

“Use drugs and you, too, can have a mon­u­ment built in your name.”

The graves of famous celebri­ties includ­ing Bri­an Jones, Elvis Pres­ley, and Jimi Hen­drix are shown in an ad designed by copy­writer Tom McEl­lig­ott for a 1983 anti-drug TV doc­u­men­tary titled “Don’t be a Dope” host­ed by John Bach­man, evi­dent­ly focus­ing on the prob­lem of drug abuse in Min­neso­ta.

8. Russian Criminals Getting Baptized in the 90s

Tat­tooed Russ­ian pris­on­ers being bap­tised in Voloko­lam­sk near Moscow, Decem­ber 1990. This comes from a series of pho­tographs tak­en by Yury Rybchin­sky titled “Father Niko­lai in the Voloko­lam­sk Prison.” There are too many pho­tos to post here, but the full series is worth see­ing as as it shows the life of a prison chap­lain just a year before the offi­cial end of the Sovi­et Union.

In the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church, bap­tism is under­stood not sim­ply as a sym­bol­ic act but as a full spir­i­tu­al rebirth, and the rit­u­al reflects this inten­si­ty even when per­formed in impro­vised envi­ron­ments such as pris­ons. The tra­di­tion­al form involves triple immer­sion in water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spir­it, sym­bol­iz­ing death to the old life and entry into the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty. In pris­ons across Rus­sia, where chap­lains or vis­it­ing priests con­duct ser­vices with lim­it­ed resources, the cer­e­mo­ny is often car­ried out in makeshift set­tings, a plas­tic basin, a met­al tub, or even a buck­et used in place of a bap­tismal font.

As seen here, prison bap­tisms are often col­lec­tive, with groups of inmates wait­ing qui­et­ly as each man steps for­ward, some­times shirt­less or in prison-issued cloth­ing, to be low­ered into the water while oth­er pris­on­ers look on. The atmos­phere tends to be solemn and intense­ly per­son­al.

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9. This London Punk

A Lon­don punk pho­tographed by Phil Ward for the cov­er of Ana­gram Records’ 1981 com­pi­la­tion Punk and Dis­or­der­ly III: The Final Solu­tion.

10. Hamlet’s Helmet by Subodh Gupta, 2003

Sub­odh Gup­ta is an Indi­an artist that builds his sculp­tures from every­day met­al house­hold objects. Stain­less-steel tif­fin box­es, cook­ing pots, buck­ets, ladles and more are col­lect­ed in huge quan­ti­ties and weld­ed or assem­bled them into oth­er forms. The process is delib­er­ate­ly indus­tri­al and repet­i­tive, echo­ing fac­to­ry labor while remain­ing root­ed in domes­tic life. Objects of ordi­nary domes­tic­i­ty turn into sym­bols of migra­tion, glob­al­iza­tion, aspi­ra­tion, and inequal­i­ty, sug­gest­ing how per­son­al lives are absorbed into vast eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al sys­tems, even as they con­tin­ue to car­ry mem­o­ry, labor, and dig­ni­ty.

This sculp­ture, one of his ear­li­er works, is dras­ti­cal­ly small­er in scale com­pared to his oth­er works, but it’s inter­est­ing how he man­aged to cre­ate a motor­cy­cle hel­met out of only reworked scrap met­al that seems to resem­ble a clas­sic knight’s hel­met.